They Kicked Me Out, So I Purchased the Opposite Mall and Overpowered Them

For two years, Natalie built a dead third-floor mall space into a bustling bakery, drawing weekend crowds all the way to the escalators. When the lease comes up for renewal, property manager Craig Miller slides over a contract with the rent raised forty percent, boasting that a trendy boba brand will pay double. He flicks cigarette ash onto her papers and tells her to leave early. Natalie smiles and agrees to move out tomorrow.

Craig only laughs, certain she has nowhere to go. But her family holds the mall's other floors: her mother Eleanor's jewelry store, her husband Liam's gym, and her brother Zach's gaming lounge. Within hours, all four businesses begin dismantling, and Eleanor secures premium space at the Monarch Plaza across the street. Then Craig cuts the bakery's power, leaving Chloe and the staff to watch the cream melt.

As moving trucks load up through the night, Craig calls to gloat about the boba designers measuring her space, unaware of the neon lights blazing across the street.